City: Mumbai
Location: Alliance Française auditorium
Date: Mon, 2012/10/29 – 6:30pm
Le complexe de Thénardier, by Jean-Michel Ribes (73’)
Two women, two generations. Mother and daughter at first glance. But she’s her maidservant, her “adopted” daughter rescued from genocide.
In a war-torn country where danger lurks on every corner, the dialogue between the mistress of the house and her maidservant explores all the intensity and subtlety of this master/slave relationship, this impassioned and ambiguous bond of codependency in which each woman is victim and oppressor in turn.
José Pliya’s language is dense, poetic, scathing and refined. It paints a penetrating, but deliberately non-judgmental picture of the gaping trap of gratitude, frustrated rebellion and desire, the contradictory impulses and tangled secrets of love and hate that unite the two women.